Author's Note: Surprise! I decided to give everyone an extra chapter for this week since I'm addicted to writing! The story only goes uphill with Xaphile and Ella from this point on, with a bit of typical drama, stubbornness, and angsty-ness here and there, so for those of you who are shipping the hell out of them, keep your fingers crossed. They're like two black holes, spiraling closer and closer to each other.
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Chapter Ninety-Four: Little Secret
Ella took her damn sweet time in the hot springs.
More than a few hours, at least, had passed since she'd left Xaphile to his own devices earlier that morning, but she couldn't get out. She needed a decent excuse for the incessent blush that had marred her face since the moment he'd spoken those words.
'I'm proud of you.'
The last time she'd experienced such joy had been so long ago that she'd actually forgotten what it felt like. Leaning back in the water, she dunked her head and slicked her hair out of her face, staring up at the late afternoon sky with glazed eyes.
Every single moment she'd experienced with him earlier was sharp in her memory.
She could practically still feel his hands on her skin, his breath on her ear...
She shivered, then curled up into a little ball on instinct and sank underwater, covering her face with both hands to shield it from the naturally heated water. Thinking about him did strange things to her body, made her freak out and want to move, to do something, to cringe.
But cringe in a good way.
Sort of.
After the backwash of inner embarrassment passed, she surfaced again and stood up.
Limping slightly through the water, she moved over to one of the big boulders that dotted the spring and set her weight against it, setting a hand across her chest. After a moment, however, something occurred to her and she looked down at her own body.
For several seconds, all she did was stare.
Xaphile was handsome... that much was true... but after thinking back, it suddenly hit her that she might not have been all that attractive in comparison to other women. She was lithe and had a very slender figure that had been toned with large amounts of exercise, but she was still fairly small in height, and her chest was rather pitiful for a girl her age.
She had almost no curves, and her skin was so white that it was obvious that her looks weren't normal. She didn't have any of the physical things that tended to draw a man's eyes. Dismay began to creep up her throat when she wondered what others saw when they looked at her.
Then she realized what she was thinking and scowled to herself.
"Why should such a stupid thing concern me?" she muttered, rubbing the bridge of her nose. "I am who I am, and nothing about me should be changed. Worrying about such fickle matters is not like me at all. Who cares if I'm not attractive? What matters is what's on the inside!"
The moment she said it, she winced internally, since she wasn't really the nicest person.
But she wanted to change that.
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